


To His Own Tune

by daroos



Category: seaQuest
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Mad Science, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Tony Piccolo went from being a smartass, to a mutant smartass with a posting on the best ship in the UEO fleet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To His Own Tune

Tony Piccolo was used to being picked on. In grade school kids would make fun of him for his broken home, even after his parents remarried. In Jr. High they called him a capitalist pig (they had moved to a neighborhood largely populated by radical socialist democrats, unbeknownst to his parents. When Sunshine Cooperative went bust a few months later they had found themselves unable to sell and hence, Tony went to ‘crazy commie’ school, as his father called it, for a few years). In High School when speedos and shaved legs made him the target of choice.

His mouth got him into trouble which even his above-average intelligence and a cool head under pressure could not get him out of. The trouble only got bigger in scope, over the years, growing from betting rings in Jr.High to distributing pornography to minors in High School. Luckily all of that was locked in his juvenile records when he was 18.

Soon after graduating high school, his mother begged him to join the service - any service. She reasoned that a war zone was probably safer when compared with suburbs for her Tony. At least there he would be kept from making his own trouble. Soon after, he joined the UEO. They both cried.

Peacekeeping sounded a whole lot better than soldiering, even if it amounted to the military however it was spun. They looked at his test results, disciplinary record, psych profile and interviews and signed him into a program as a rescue diver. He probably would have had a very different life path if he hadn’t gotten narc’ed on his last deep-water training exercise. He had been jimmying with his dive records so he could get the requisite hours in, in time for the current testing cycle. It wouldn’t have been a bad thing, really, but he messed up the mix on his tanks because he was so waterlogged, and next thing he knew he was in the brig with a healthy goose egg.

He was court martialed. When asked for comment he replied, “I have nothing to say.” which was taken as impudence, but in actuality, he couldn’t remember what had happened. His CO said he’d started drifting off on the dive and become violent - the guy had never liked him, and “I got narc’ed because I was falsifying records” didn’t seem like it would go over any better.

Military prison and Tony did not get along. There were the hard-line crazies - guys who hadn’t been all together before entering service who had gone off the deep end and done something awful in one way or another. There were the guys who did something they regretted and sat around, seriously thinking about What They Had Done. Then there was Tony. Mouth-y, cocky and always ready to test the bars of his cage, he turned a short sentence into an ever-expanding one. When they offered a way out to the non-violent offenders (of which he apparently applied), his was the first hand raised.

The stack of paperwork he signed was truly alarming, especially considering the stack of paperwork he HAD signed upon joining up, which had basically amounted to “We own you - accept receipt of delivery here, here and here.” Accidental death forms. Accidental side effect forms. Materials safety acknowledgements. Ceding rights to his body in the case of untimely death to the UEO scientist ghouls. Religious waiver forms. Transgenic usage consent. He gave up after page 10 or so, and just signed, initialed, and nodded when a sharply dressed military lawyer would tell him things.

A doctor talked to him after all the papers were signed. She was older while still being pretty, and spoke in a calm, dignified manner common to those used to being listened to. She asked if he had any questions.

“Will it hurt?” He felt like a little kid, staring at his tetanus vaccine in a syringe with horrified anticipation.

“Yes, though you will be given pain killers.”

“Will I die?”

She smiled ruefully, “A willing participant is much too valuable, Mr. Piccolo. We would never be doing this if we thought that likely, but it is a remote possibility. Complications from surgery and gene therapy are always a danger.”

“Gills?” He asked, finally, weakly.

“Man came from the oceans. I can’t say this is natural, but I will say that I am more than a little envious of you, Mr. Piccolo.”

“Oh really? Then why don’t you do it?”

“This sort of radical gene therapy and surgery at my age would likely kill me. You’re young, and much healthier. In short, it would work for you, Mr. Piccolo. I would probably just die in agony.”

Tony paled. “You’re not selling this, Doc.”

She gave him a challenging look. “Shall we begin?”

The good thing about working for the government was that they had the best drugs. Controlled opiates, muscle relaxants, everything was a this doc’s disposal, and she used it all liberally to make him comfortable through several rough weeks. Anybody who’d ever said gene therapy was an easy way out had never experienced it. The worst parts of chemotherapy and autoimmune diseases teamed up to remodel the patient to receive transplants. His skin flaked off and his hair fell out. His fingernails became brittle and weak, and would bleed when he chewed them. His electrolytes fluctuated so wildly he was nauseous and dizzy for the better part of a week and lost an alarming amount of weight. By the time he was ready for surgery, he was glad to see the sleep-inducing drugs coming his way, and part of him hoped he wouldn’t have to wake up.

Wake up he did, though. His doctor was in a chair by his bed, reading scientific papers on a Pad. He felt bloated and dehydrated and still very drugged. “Am I gonna make it?” He asked.

“You’re going to be better than new, Mr. Piccolo.”

Better than new apparently meant ‘really awful for a good long while’. Breathing hurt. Most things hurt in concert with breathing, but breathing was the main thing. Humidifiers of ever-increasing size kept appearing in his room until he felt like a hothouse orchid, dripping with moisture from the air. Prickles of hair were growing back, though, so he took the good with the bad.

The bandages on his back came off later that week, permanently. Some feeling was starting to come in to the ‘donor structure’, as the attendants called it - who donated it, Tony did NOT want to know. When they ran an instrument which would technically be described as a metal stick down the gills he could feel a tingling, like feeling returning to a limb. He had now been out of communication for close to two months. As long as it was, it seemed a very short time indeed to transition from a common ne’er-do-well to first class freak.

The first time he used his gills felt like drowning. It was really a dirty trick. They got him in one of the dive chambers he had used all through training to test his vitals underwater. He wasn’t quite clear on why, but the remnants of pain medication wiped away concern about that. Before he knew what they had in mind, the tank was shut and the water was filling to the top and he didn’t have anywhere to go at all. He held his breath as long as he could, which was quite a long time. Black spots swam through his vision and popping sounded in his ears - he was sure it was the sound of brain cells dying. His doctor was pounding on the glass of his fish tank, signalling something he wasn’t understanding. His lungs seized, coughing out stale depleted air and traitorously drawing in water. He coughed again, harder, choking and panicking as salty water flooded through his sinuses and bronchial passages and into a deep, cold place in his center. He thought he was dying as the blood pounded in his eardrums slower and slower, an alien cold settling in his chest. He closed his eyes and waited for a light, or brimstone, or simple oblivion.

Booming thuds startled him from his acceptance of the inevitable. His doctor was distorted through the curve of the plexiglass, but she was smiling and urgently signing, asking if was ok. Surprised, Tony bumped his fist on the top of his head in the diver’s “A-OK” sign. It wasn’t quite breathing, but it didn’t hurt, and that was an improvement. Behind his doctor he could see some of the analysts throwing up their clipboards in celebration. If he thought about it he could feel the rhythmic pulse of the gills, gorging and disgorging water into an oxygen-binding alveolar-like tissue housed at the base of his lungs.

Being decanted from the dive chamber was like dying in reverse, choking out what seemed like gallons of salty water.

“Tony, you need to understand this. You’ll very likely be in situations where you are the only one who understands your physical capabilities and limitations and you need to be able to make informed decisions.”

“But Doc - I was never good at this science stuff.”

“Well get good.” His doctor had an MRI of his torso which looked distinctly less like what little he remembered from high school biology. In truth, his resistance to biology lessons were more from a desire to avoid uncomfortable new truths along himself, than a lack of aptitude. “This right here is the gas exchange at the base of each lung lobe. They decrease your lung air capacity in general, but under exertion the gas exchange vents the fluid via these vessels to your kidneys-”

“Can you bottom line this for me, Doc?”

“Under non-submarine conditions it is possible to hyperventilate, thereby flooding your blood with an excess of oxygen and throwing your electrolytes into chaos. It may also raise your blood pressure above dangerous levels. I would recommend against it in except extreme circumstances.”

“But underwater I’m 100%?”

“You should be better than 100%.”

“Sounds like a fair trade. Do I have depth restrictions? Dive time limits? Just the bullet points, ya know?”

“We don’t have any depth limit studies yet, so all I can say is take it slow. Limit extreme cold exposure - it may stop your heart. Keep the dive times to the tables if you’re deep, otherwise there shouldn’t be limits.”

“Sounds good. When can I get in the water?”

Later that day, Tony was moved to a secure, private room directly off a salt-water pool, and given liberty of both.

The second time was entirely on his own terms. Like picking at a scab he swam and swam, always coming up for air. The salt water had a stale, recycled tang. A spycam blinked at him from the corner of the pool room, no doubt recording his activities for posterity.

Deliberately he gripped the edge of the pool and pushed himself down, expelling a breath. The gene therapy and surgery had depleted all stores of body fat and so he sank readily to the bottom of the five-meter pool.

Water covered his nose and mouth setting off every mammalian instinct not to breathe in. Reciting a short prayer he drew in a laborious lung full of water, flushing out the remaining air in a few painful coughs. A familiar feeling of deep coldness permeated him and a preternatural calm. Checking over all body parts, they were present and functioning. A pulsing ripple went through him, pumping water in a reflexive rhythm. He pushed along the bottom a few steps and began a sedate breaststroke. The movement calmed some bodily system which he didn’t have the experience to pinpoint, and so he maintained his pace around the pool. Aside from the water pump’s steady gurgle, it was silent underwater. The splashing and grunts of effort he normally associated with a swim competition were absent, as were the sounds of boat motors, clicking krill, or waves.

Getting out of the water, he liked to think that he vomited up twenty gallons of water in a more dignified manner than he had managed previously. Later he would figure out how to flush excess liquid through his gills, but until that point he was resigned to horrible choking sounds accompanying any surfacing.

His doctor was happy with his physical progress. He spent more hours underwater than upworld, languishing at the bottom of his pool like a mud-puppy. “I’m worried about you, Tony.”

Tony glanced up at his doctor. He had, if possible, lost more weight. His skin clung desperately to muscle and sinew in spite of a caloric intake double the average prisoner. “I gotta ask you, Doc: you went to all the trouble to give us gills - why not flippers, salt-protected lids - the whole shebang?” He mused in tangent to her comment.

“We were trying to make humans better, Tony, not make sea monsters. Besides, flippers would never have fit in the standard-issue shoes.”

Tony could recognize a humorous redirect when he saw one. Perhaps they had tried and it had gone horribly wrong. “So what’s on the menu today?”

“A roommate. We’ve been getting passive recordings on your status every time you swim, so just keep it up. And take care of the new guy - he had complications during surgery and only this week got out of the ICU. He hasn’t had any time in the water and could probably benefit from your experience.”

Johnny was a screw up. He could do something while brushing his teeth that would get him a court martial. He was also a genuine guy, which left Tony in a real quandary. Just being near Johnny could get a person in trouble, but he never really meant for whatever happened to happen. It was confusing.

Importantly, after two months of near isolation, here was someone else who shared his predicament in more ways than one. Together they figured out the flushing-water-from-the-gills trick, and how to keep salt water out of their sinuses using face masks with a little positive pressure. A week later they were put back in general population with their exercise periods spent in a pool on the other side of the prison complex. Their special treatment led to suspicion. Showers made it abundantly clear that they were different. In retrospect, Tony had felt the tension building for a few days. Apprehensive looks had turned hostile. Murmurs of mistrust had increased in volume until “mermaid” and “mutant” were clearly heard whenever he passed other inmates. 

Genetic experimentation and human alterations were not thought of kindly, generally, and people who would volunteer for it to get out of a little well deserved time in lockup were put in the same class as snitches. When it happened, it came out of nowhere. A punch which may have been aimed at a kidney hit him square in a gill on the right side - it was like a strike to the groin and the solar plexus at the same time, knocking the breath and the fight out of him in one fell swoop.

Tony was on the ground and taking kicks. He tried to protect his head, but somewhere he saw a shiv, and then another come out, and he knew he was in bigger trouble than a broken arm or so. He tried to roll under a bench out of the way of some of his aggressors, hoping for the guards to step in.

Johnny flew in out of nowhere, roaring and kicking indiscriminately at the crowd surrounding Tony. He head-butted one guy in the teeth, earning a gash in his head which bled freely, and kicked another in the groin with a savage force. A third came at him with a shiv, which he avoided with the classic self-defense sidestep, engage attacker and disarm sequence everyone learned in basic. Abruptly the fight was over. Stunner bolts flew through the remaining crowd and Tony was dragged to the infirmary.

“Well, I can say this for you, Tony; you take a beating like a champ.”

“Gee, thanks. If I get that in writing I’ll send that to my mother - she can frame it and put it on the wall.”

“I have something else she might want to hang on the wall.” Doc put a stack of papers with a lot of UEO seals on them on his hospital table. Tony picked up the top one.

“Transfer papers?”

“They finally decided on a commission which can use your unique capabilities. The Seaquest-”

“I know about the Seaquest, believe you me.” He put the paper back, only to pick it up once more, not quite believing his fortune.

His escape into the aquatubes would have worked if it hadn’t been for Darwin, but in retrospect, Tony was glad it hadn’t worked.


End file.
